My organization has Java versions from 1.1 - 1.7 installed on our servers. As a large organization, it is extremely costly to upgrade all our installations and applications to Java 7, so our leadership is asking us what is the risk of not upgrading the older Java versions.

We know about security vulnerabilities and that they can be exploited. But that is difficult to quantify unless/until an exploit occurs.

Other than security vulnerabilities, what risks are there to not upgrading Java on our servers? I was not able to find much when I searched.

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I have the opposite concern: if I start using Java 7 how many users of my various desktop applications and applets, currently all Java 6, will no longer be able to work? How long does it take browser plug-ins etc to move from 6 to 7? Oracle seems to give no guidance on such things.